Category: Trump

As our readers know, we are honoring our Georgia Republican politicians for their unstinting support for the Presidency of Donald Trump by substituting their names for Trump’s in media headlines. That conveys all you need to know about the Republicans, without the filter of IndieDems’ editorial perspective.

Johnny Isakson seems to have abandoned any concept of serving the interests of his constituents, beyond tapping the federal pork barrel to benefit whatever special interests feed from the federal trough. Isakson’s Republican Administration is in near total melt down as Trump’s criminality, chaos, ineptness, incompetence, and immorality produce their inevitable consequences. Trump and his Republicans are waging war against American democracy itself.

And where is Senator Johnny Isakson in all this? Nowhere to be seen nor heard, as he maintains his unwavering support for Trump as president. Below is just a selective choice of about two days worth of headlines on critical issues that Isakson has said not a word about. There is nothing on Isakson’s web page about any of this. Zero. Zilch. Of course, his web page also says nothing about Michael Flynn, Michael Cohen, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, Roger Stone, or Robert Mueller, either.

A report prepared for the Senate that provides the most sweeping analysis yet of Russia’s disinformation campaign around the 2016 election found the operation used every major social media platform to deliver words, images and videos tailored to voters’ interests to help elect President Trump — and worked even harder to support him while in office.

(IndieDems note: Trump and Isakson have done virtually nothing to punish Putin for his acts or to strengthen America’s defenses against Russia’s continuing onslaught).

The Dictionary of the American Underworld Lingo defines “rat” as someone who “secretly aids the police to apprehend criminals.” In other words, as someone who helps the good guys destroy the bad guys. Those good guys are the ones Donald Trump and Johnny Isakson don’t like.

“the future president and his siblings set up a phony business to pad the cost of nearly everything their father, the legendary builder Fred C. Trump, purchased for his buildings. The Trump children split that extra money. Padding the invoices had a secondary benefit for the Trumps, allowing them to inflate rent increases on their father’s rent-regulated apartments.”

And on and on it goes—along with Isakson’s near total dereliction of duty.

Georgia Republicans swim the deepest.

December 12, 2018 marked a watershed in United States politics. The sentencing of Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen for his role in providing hush money to buy the silence of Trump’s illicit paramours not only symbolized the craven nature of the Trump Administration, it unleashed a torrent of facts collected by federal investigators that showed Trump’s own criminal complicity and laid bare the wider gross corruption and immorality of his entire Administration.

Much of what has been revealed in legal filings and court proceedings in recent weeks involving the criminal cases against both Cohen and Paul Manafort was already publicly known, but the legal proceedings have given the facts the legitimacy of having been used in a federal courtroom to convict and sentence Cohen—with more to come when the already convicted Manafort appears for his sentencing. And all of that is only the tip of the iceberg toward which Trump is hurdling.

In short, December 12 showed the tipping point has come in the inevitable destruction of the Trump Presidency.

Our topic today is more narrowly focused. By now, any average person with an ounce of morality would be outraged by Trump and turn their backs on him. Not Republicans. They not only have not repudiated him, or beat a cowardly retreat. Acting according to form, in the wake of the revelations of Trump’s immoral and illegal acts, Republicans have rushed to defend Trump from Cohen.

Senator Hatch Lives Up to Role as GOP’s Senior Poster Boy for Hypocrisy

But Senator Hatch (R-UT) is the hands-down winner of Republican Hypocrite of the Week award, and in the running to win the year’s trophy. His apologia for Trump stands in stark contrast to his condemnation of Bill Clinton for committing the same acts in the Lewinski affair.

2018
Senator Hatch in an interview with CNN: “I don’t think (Trump) was involved in crimes, but even then, you know, you can make anything a crime under the current laws if you want to. You can blow it way out of proportion. You can do a lot of things.” When the interviewer noted that it was federal prosecutors and not Democrats who implicated Trump in a crime, Hatch said:
“Okay, but I don’t care. All I can say is he’s doing a good job as president.”

1999
Senator Hatch on Bill Clinton’s possible impeachment: “This great nation can tolerate a president who makes mistakes, but it cannot tolerate one who makes a mistake and then breaks the law to cover it up. Upholding our Constitution — a sacred document that Americans have fought and died for — is more important than any one person, including the president of the United States…committing crimes of moral turpitude such as perjury and obstruction of justice go to the heart of qualification for public office. These offenses (by Clinton) were committed by the chief executive of our country, the individual who swore to faithfully execute the laws of the United States.”

You can’t get more pathetic than Orrin Hatch. When Trump became President, IndieDems listed him among the four most prominent enablers of Trump’s deranged, depraved presidency: Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, Orrin Hatch, Nikki Haley. Why Hatch? Because his politics, religiosity, and length of service make him the very epitome of what the Republican Party stands for.

He fervently supports the bedrock Republican platform of “socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor and middle class.”

His professed adherence to the Mormon faith is a thin disguise for his overwhelming hypocrisy, which has burst forth in ever more shining glory as he has sacrificed God’s 10 Commandments and Jesus’ Golden Rule on the altar of keeping Donald Trump in power to pass more tax cuts for the rich, while throwing the average American’s health care and welfare under the bus.

Either the Mormon Church has abandoned the 10 Commandments and the Golden Rule, or Orrin Hatch has abandoned the Mormon Church. Got to be one or the other.

He is the longest-serving Republican United States Senator.

But it’s Hatch’s words in his CNN interview about Trump’s criminal and immoral acts that nailed him as the pluperfect poster boy for Trump’s morally and intellectually bankrupt Republican Party:

“I don’t care. All I can say is he’s doing a good job as president.”

Imagine. This supposedly God-fearing and Jesus-loving politician openly declares that morality and common human decency are meaningless to him in judging his president. All Hatch cares about is that Trump is doing a good job of making the rich richer. God’s laws and Jesus’ teachings be damned.

And those words, of course, are the literal mantra Republicans have chanted to apologize for Trump since the day he assumed office: we Republicans know as much as everyone about Trump’s congenital lying, vulgarity, bullying, slander, misogyny, racism, and xenophobia. We just don’t care.

But Hatch has announced he will not run for re-election this year, bringing his Senate career to an end. Who will take his place as the Senate poster boy for the morally and intellectually bankrupt Republican Party?

IndieDems’ nominee: Georgia’s own Senator Johnny Isakson. He fits the bill in every respect, except maybe for the length of service. But let’s not sweat the small stuff. Isakson’s Republican heart and soul is right there with Orrin Hatch’s—and Donald Trump’s.

Senator Johnny Isakson’s definition of good government:
“The Democrats (in Wisconsin) won the popular vote in State Assembly contests by a margin of 54 percent to 46 percent but emerged with only 36 seats to the GOP’s 63.”

I had begun drafting the first of what is meant to be a series of posts highlighting Senator Isakson’s positions on major issues of the day, beginning with the Republicans’ flagrant anti-democratic moves in Wisconsin and Michigan (With Power Grabs in the Midwest, G.O.P. Risks a 2020 Backlash). Isakson’s endorsement of this assault on democracy and the rule of law is another indication of his willingness to sacrifice America’s basic moral and democratic values on the altar of keeping in power a Republican Party dedicated to keeping Trump as President and serving the interests of the rich and powerful.

I wanted to show that, as IndieDems predicted, Isakson’s two-year descent into Trump’s moral and intellectual sewer is bottomless.

Alas, E.J. Dionne, one of our major newspaper columnist, has scooped us by writing an analysis of the how the GOP’s actions in the Midwest are the latest in a pattern of Republican frontal assaults on democracy throughout America, and the dire consequences of their war. Dionne, of course, does not single out Isakson, but the Senator’s complicity is apparent for all to see.

Let me quote liberally from Dionne’s words that use facts and logic to describe the Republican Party’s threat to democracy and the rule of law. As you read, remember this: Georgia’s Senator Johnny Isakson finds all of this perfectly acceptable. I have occasionally inserted his name in parentheses to nail the point.

In case after case, Republicans (like Isakson) have demonstrated an eagerness to undercut democracy and tilt the rules of the game if doing so serves their ideological interests. The quiet coup by the GOP-controlled legislature in Wisconsin is designed to defy the voters’ wishes. It reflects an abandonment of the disciplines that self-government requires.

Republicans (like Isakson)are shifting power to the state legislature because radically gerrymandered district boundaries helped the GOP maintain their majorities in the state Senate and Assembly despite the Democrats’ performance at the top of the ticket.

Republican (Isakson’s) indifference to democratic norms is not confined to Wisconsin. Republicans in Michigan (which also replaced a Republican governor with a Democrat this year) are working on a similar effort.

Both states are borrowing from a playbook used by North Carolina Republicans to thwart the voters’ will after elections in 2016. And in states such as Florida and Utah, GOP legislators are also trying to dilute progressive referendum victories, according to the HuffPost.

The GOP’s (Isakson’s) anti-democratic impulse has far more in common with the old segregationist Democrats of the South than with the best Republican traditions that led to the rights-conferring 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution.

The party’s (Isakson’s) efforts to lock in power regardless of election outcomes also eerily echo some of the behaviors of anti-democratic politicians abroad.

But most in the party are either complicit or silent. Is it any wonder, then, that most Republicans (like Isakson) are also willing to go right along with Trump?

Johnny Isakson’s sacrifice of any semblance of respect for the 10 Commandments, the Golden Rule, America’s basic moral and democratic values—and common human decency—on the altar of keeping Donald Trump as President desecrates his country and his duty, and insults his constituents.

Dissenting voices to that judgment? Let your response begin by noting that Trump recently invited Kanye West to the Oval Office, sat by approvingly as West used words like “motherfucker” and “shit”, and gave him a hug afterwards. Not a peep of rebuke from Isakson. How further into the Trump sewer can you go?

Georgia Senator Johnny Isakson has remained a staunch advocate for the Presidency of Donald Trump through thick and thin. His support is unwavering even after recent court filings by Special Counsel Mueller and by the Southern District of New York that place the Trump Administration in deepening legal peril.. The Federal prosecutors revealed more details on the connections between Russia and Trump’s associates and implicated Trump more directly in some of the crimes admitted to by Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen.

No problem for Johnny Isakson. For him, Trump is still the president who is making America great again.

Now, Trump’s fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in a TV interview on December 6 further defined the characteristics that Johnny Isakson finds acceptable in a president. Tillerson said that Trump is “pretty undisciplined, doesn’t like to read” and repeatedly attempted to do illegal things.

“So often, the president would say, ‘Here’s what I want to do, and here’s how I want to do it, and I would have to say to him, ‘Mr. President, I understand what you want to do, but you can’t do it that way. It violates the law.’ ” (Is there a problem? says Johnny Isakson)

“What was challenging for me coming from the disciplined, highly process-oriented ExxonMobil corporation was to go to work for a man who is pretty undisciplined, doesn’t like to read, doesn’t read briefing reports, doesn’t like to get into the details of a lot of things, but rather just kind of says, ‘This is what I believe.’ ” (Great President, says Johnny Isakson).

And Trump provided yet more insight into what Isakson looks for in a president with this Tweet responding to the Tillerson interview:

“Mike Pompeo is doing a great job, I am very proud of him. His predecessor, Rex Tillerson, didn’t have the mental capacity needed. He was dumb as a rock and I couldn’t get rid of him fast enough. He was lazy as hell. Now it is a whole new ballgame, great spirit at State!”

This was too much even for Pastor Bryant Wright of the Johnson Ferry Baptist Church in Marietta, GA. He retweeted Trump’s words with this comment:

“Pray for the President to repent of such childishness as this. This is disgraceful behavior for anyone.”

The minute Gary Abernathy began appearing on the pages of the Post as an apologist for Donald Trump, I anointed him as America’s Chief Yahoo. After all, the man is a writer by trade and a former newspaper editor and is capable of writing coherent English paragraphs. Those credentials put him a cut above the average Trump yahoo—and have allowed him to write this quintessential example of Trumpian yahooism, characterized by obfuscation, misleading statements, and selective use of facts.

The Republicans’ picking up Senate seats shows Trump’s strength? No, it shows the Republicans exploiting three endemic flaws in our political system to gain unwarranted advantage: 1) the disproportionate power a minority can gain from the working of the archaic Constitutional grant of two Senate seats to each State; 2) the Republicans’ horrendous misuse of gerrymandering to frustrate majority rule; 3) the benefits derived from the GOP’s decades-long effort to suppress the minority vote, mightily deployed again this year.

Like the true Trumpian demagogue he is, Abernathy completely ignores the overriding fact about the 2018 elections: Democrats won an overwhelming majority of the popular vote in both the House and Senate races, despite Republicans’ tying their hands with the above ropes! And even more: despite a booming economy!

Abernathy also ignores the main reason the rest of us are fed up with Trump’s Republican yahoo hinterland: they enthusiastically embraced a campaign based on racism, xenophobia, and white nationalism (i.e., supremacy), fueled by demagoguery full of fear-mongering, hate-mongering, and race-baiting. Brought to us by a Republican Party that has brought us the most corrupt Presidential administration ever and daily tramples on the Constitution, the rule of law, and our common democratic and moral values.

You Republican flyover yahoos want respect? Earn it by giving up your racist, xenophobia, ignorant ways. First steps: stop the Tweets and stop the serial lying.

More on What the Republican Yahoos Need to Do

What a smug, self-deluded apologia for Donald Trump Abernathy has produced. Far from offering a rational defense of Trump, Abernathy has unintentionally revealed what it is in the hearts and minds of flyover Republicans that make them so repulsive. You hinterland yahoos want recognition and respect? Here’s how to earn it:

-Stop Trump’s obnoxious,insulting Tweets.
-Stop Trump’s daily lies, especially the Hitler-level demagogic ones he tells about Hispanic migrants
-Get rid of your racist, xenophobic, misogynist, white supremacist attitudes that fueled the rise of Donald Trump and and that you vividly showed by loudly applauding Trump every time he displayed them in every speech he made during the 2018 campaign
-Get Trump to tell the truth about Kahshoggi’s murder and take the appropriate retaliation against the one who ordered it
-Stop Trump from praising Vladimir Putin and every other brutal dictator in the world while insulting America’s most faithful allies
-Get Trump to release his income tax records
-Stop Trump from wrecking the American economy and sending the stock market plunging with his misguided trade war
-Stop Trump’s defiance of the emoluments clause
-Get Trump to clean up his massively corrupt administration

Next, you flyover yahoos should get Trump to apologize for:
-Committing serial adultery, (and pledge he will never do it again)
-Praising neo–Nazi demonstrators in Charlottesville
-Lying about Obama’s place of birth
-Calling foreign countries s—tholes
-Calling Omarosa a dog
-Calling Megyn Kelly a bimbo
-Demeaning John McCain’s military service
-Mocking a handicapped person

In short, my yahoo friends, stop your support for the vulgar, crude, bully Trump and his assault on America’s basic democratic and moral values–and common human decency–and join your fellow Americans in upholding America’s traditional Christian values. We are about at the point where we will never forgive you.

As our readers know, we are honoring our Georgia Republican politicians for their unstinting support for the Presidency of Donald Trump by substituting their names for Trump’s in media headlines. That conveys all you need to know about the Republicans, without the filter of IndieDems’ editorial perspective.

The death of former President George H.W. Bush has produced some of the most eloquent insights into Trump and his supporters, as reports and commentaries have proliferated contrasting the decent, honest, and gentleman Bush with the rude, thuggish, insulting, vulgar Donald Trump.

Below is our selection of the best one of the lot. It states how Bush’s eulogists “spoke of what made Bush a great leader, which are the very traits that, by their absence, make Trump so woefully inadequate” and how Bush “called on us to choose the right over the convenient, to hope rather than to fear, and to heed not our worst impulses, but our best instincts.” While in the front pew sat Trump, “who leads by stoking fear and confirming base impulses.”

What an excellent summary of the hearts and souls of Trump an his Georgia supporters.

The Republican Party–including Georgia Republicans–gave us Donald Trump. Republicans are responsible for the presidency of Donald Trump. Trump=Republican and Republican=Trump. The corrupt, immoral, and incompetent Donald Trump represents the very heart and soul of the corrupt, immoral, and incompetent Republicans, every last one of them. (As of January, any Republican dissenter will no longer hold office).

Trump lap dogs, all. Each of them shouted their praise of Trump even as he waged the most racist, xenophobic, nativist, ethnic nationalist political campaign in history, ruled by fear mongering, hate mongering, and race baiting.

Republican in Washington are not only selling out their country to a racist, xenophobic, misogynist, corrupt, criminal, adulterer, liar and thug, they are the lowest examples of cowards in human history for doing so.

Please, do not make me puke by stating that some of those supporters of Trump’s depravity have rapped his knuckles on some matter. None of them have deviated in their support for him remaining president, and every one of them is poised to urge his re-election. Haley, the most prominent female enabler of the sexual harasser Trump, already has. That’s all that matters.

We continue to honor Senator Johnny Isakson for his unstinting support for the Presidency of Donald Trump by substituting his name for Trump’s in media headlines. That conveys all you need to know about Isakson without the filter of IndieDems’ editorial perspective. Here’s the latest:

The Vulgarity and Violence of Johnny Isakson(Here is a quote from the article, using Trump’s name. Too insightful to pass up) “Curiously, Trump’s social autism is the source of his appeal. A Pew survey found that what Trump’s supporters like most about him is his personality, not his policies. They like his personality more than his policies for the same reason that men like the sex scenes in pornography more than the plots: Vulgarity is the point.”

We continue to honor Senator David Perdue for his unstinting support for the Presidency of Donald Trump by substituting his name for Trump’s in media headlines. That conveys all you need to know about Perdue without the filter of IndieDems’ editorial perspective. Here’s the latest: